The win also makes it two in two weekends. The Sunday prior, another surprise win at the Oakley Prizm Trail 10.5km race at Hok Tau. Not sure what I am doing right but I hope these good vibes continue!!

Something different for a Friday night, and a fab way to wake up on a Saturday.

After work, with headlamps to light the way, we hiked about 2 hours through Sai Kung Country Park to Ham Tin Wan, pitched our tent, had a picnic for dinner and fell asleep under the stars. Sunrise at about 5.30am was a stunning wake up call, and then I set off for Sharp Peak while the summer’s day was yet to blaze. The rest of the day was lazy: food at On Kee Store on the beach (tel: 2328 2262), reading and napping, dipping in the clear blue bay, strolling across the soft sand, and then a sunset speedboat (tel: 9800 3601, Mr Man Tsam for booking) back to Sai Kung Town for a Thai dinner. Perfect.

Our first mom and daughter race together this past weekend at the Garmin Malaysia for Runners Penang 7km race ended up to be a surprise win! Okay, so it was only a fun run, but people were actually racing it as there were trophies for the top 10.

With a race start at 6.30am in the Unesco World Heritage area of Georgetown, I snuck out of bed at about 5.30 to get ready and then dragged a very sleepy toddler out of bed at 6.10am to jog about 1km to the start line. Little M fell asleep again on the way there but the dance music blasting pre-flag off woke her up again. She was in a daze (see photo below) while people stared at my unusual choice of racing gear (i.e. resistance in the form of a baby in a stroller).

I stood in the middle of the field behind the start line because I thought I would be slow and shouldn’t hold up the faster runners. But as soon as the gun went I found myself snaking past slow joggers and catching up one by one with the race leaders. Everyone gave me a double take as I ran passed them and some even tried to speed up to keep pace with me.

Eventually at around the 3km mark I caught up with the lead runner who had a mountain biker (official race escort) riding alongside her. As soon as I passed this runner the biker started following me instead and so I knew I was in the lead. Up to this point I wasn’t pushing the pace but now in the lead, I thought, what the heck I should just try to win this thing!!

So we didn’t look back and little M and I snagged our first victory together! As you can tell from the photos I am not using a running stroller – it’s actually a travel stroller, the McLaren Mark II, one of the world’s lightest (and therefore not built ergonomically for running with). I wonder how fast I can actually go with one of those fancy running strollers..﻿